Week long campaign starts Monday to remind bikers to wear helmets and drivers to slow down

Starting Monday 16 July through Sunday the 22nd, police officers will be out on the streets and highways to promote road safety to all motorists and cyclists.

This week’s awareness campaign will focus primarily on speed violations, reckless driving, driving without a permit, and not wearing a helmet, all of which were contributing factors in recent fatal accidents.

Over the weekend, a 21-year-old woman riding her bicycle was killed when a car collided with her, with police initially saying there were no lights in the area outside the Ormidia livestock farming area.

Between 2015 and 2017, close to 48 per cent of bikers who were killed on the road did not wear a helmet. And during the same period, pedestrian fatalities came close to 29% of road fatalities, car drivers at 27%, and bikers made up 26% of those who lost their life on the road.

In a rollover accident last month, a father of two who was speeding and not wearing a seat belt was killed when his car’s side mirror struck an oncoming car on a Limassol main road.

Hours later on the same day, a similar accident took place on a Larnaca highway. A little girl in the back of a pickup truck, who did not have her seat belt fastened, was killed when another driver -who did not have a valid driver's permit- fell asleep at the wheel and struck her family’s car from behind.

Ten days later, two 11-year-old girls were killed instantly, with one of them crushed by the overturned vehicle, when a fatigued driver – the mother of one of the girls – lost control of her vehicle. The two girls who were in the backseat without their seat belts fastened.